


If only one night (4/7)

by In_Arcadia_IO



Series: If only one night [4]
Category: LOTR RPS AU
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, LOTR RPS AU - Freeform, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-19 10:24:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3606645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/In_Arcadia_IO/pseuds/In_Arcadia_IO
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>In a different world Orlando Bloom is a hired assassin. But what happens when he gets too close to his target?</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	If only one night (4/7)

Four – Fugue Amnesia

Never is the night as quiet as in the wee hours, those bleak, endless spaces beyond midnight when time herself is asleep, awaiting dawn under a blanket of shadows and dusk, her empty eyes wide open.

It had been raining when Orlando had shown up at the gallery earlier in the evening. Meanwhile, however, the heavy rain had changed into a fine drizzle, a drip-dropping background of night set up behind the huge windows. Now and then a car rushed past outside, low muffled growl of an engine, water splashing up in the wheelhouses. From afar the faint honking of an ambulance car could be heard. Nearby, the lurching sounds of a drunken couple faded off into the distance.

After an extensive tour through the gallery they had finally found themselves in a room, much smaller than the ones before.

"We have placed this piece at the end," Viggo explained. "People can chill out here and relax. Meditate." He winked. "Or reflect whether they shouldn't buy anything."

It was a peculiar place, as if one stepped into an over-sized laterna magica. Inside, it was almost completely dark. But the moment they entered myriads of little dots and loops lit up on the walls and on the ceiling.

Soon, a projector began casting even more irregular forms onto the walls. In the background, faint sounds of chimes could be heard, of water flowing and birds singing.

"Here, take a seat." Viggo pointed to a sofa in the middle of the small cubicle. "Maybe you like this kind of art better."

Orlando looked around curiously. "One can actually buy this?" he asked, flopping himself onto the soft pillows.

"You won't believe it. It's sold already. Next week it will be de-installed and moved to the new owner's place."

Orlando hadn't paid much attention to the works Viggo had shown him before. But this room was different. It was a place of calm and tranquillity, soothing even Orlando's strained senses.

While Viggo was describing which kind of phosphorescing colours the artist had used and how difficult it had been to install the light sources so they would be completely hidden from the visitors, Orlando suddenly found himself thinking … thinking of a rainy evening, many years ago.

He and Sam huddled against worn-out cushions in front of an old-fashioned fireplace. Smell of smoke and wet fir cones. The soft sounds the logs were making when cracking up in the flames. Sam's hushed voice.

"Finally, the werewolves had circled them. They were coming closer and closer. The companions' situation seemed hopeless."

"And what happened then?" Orlando had asked breathless. He must have been no older than five or six then.

Sam stirred the fire with a poker and waited till the flames sprang up again.

"Suddenly, the vampire hunter appeared on top of the hill. He held up a big flaming torch and cried: "Get back, you beasts, back into the pits of hell you came from!"

They couldn't have imagined then there would be situations when no one comes to rescue you.

Abruptly, Viggo's voice called him back to the present. Seemed he had been asking something.

"Sorry, I didn't follow you," Orlando said, rubbing his hands. Suddenly, he felt cold.

"Why did you come here?"

Life could be so easy. If only he was someone else, someone sitting in a comfortable living room, drinking wine, talking about music and books with a friend. As if yesterday didn't exist. Nor tomorrow. Sweet pretense of normality.

But this was no comfortable living room and the man in front him was not a friend.

Orlando looked up.

"It doesn't matter any more. You won't see me again. I'll be leaving tomorrow. "

Viggo set down next to him, his face inscrutable in the semi-darkness. "And this is the truth now?"

"Yes. Here have a look." Orlando pulled out a ticket from his jacket. "See, my plane leaves tomorrow at 10.50 a.m.

Viggo seemed to be contemplating something and then he said slowly. "Will you answer one last question before you leave?"

Not waiting for Orlando's answer, he got up quickly. "Just a second, I'm going to fetch something I want to show you."

A little while later, he re-appeared with what appeared to be a canvas wrapped up in thin cloth.

"Maybe you can explain this to me."

Carefully, he removed the cloth. Underneath, there was a painting, roughly the size of 60x80.

"It's quite dark in here. I can't see it properly."

"That can be changed." Out of nowhere Viggo produced a remote control. Instantly, the room grew brighter. The blurry outlines on the canvas changed into something different.

And Orlando's heart stood still.

At first, he could hardly speak. "What's that?" he just gasped, staring at the picture, incredulous.

"I had hoped *you* could tell me more about it."

"I've never seen this before. Who made it?"

"You're not exactly an art expert, aren't you? Otherwise, you'd have instantly recognized this as a Cate.B."

"A Cate B.?"

"Come on. You never saw pictures of her? In some glossy magazine, perhaps? The yellow press just loves her scandalous behaviour. She's such an appearance. Blond mane, classy and elegant, but laughs like a sailor, seems unpredictable like a thunder storm and just as devastating."

Orlando looked down on the picture again. "Yeah, maybe I saw her once."

As if he could have forgotten.

It had been only two days ago. After handing him the envelope accompanied by that ominous warning Sean had invited Orlando, all casually now, "to drop by" in the evening. Orlando hated Sean's infamous parties with a passion, still he had shown up around 10 p.m..

Sean's penthouse had been crowded by the usual entourage with whom Sean liked to make himself a name as a promoter of the fine arts. Naturally, there were money people and a few of Sean's important "business connections", but snobbish blue bloods and pretty starlets, too, plus the inevitable striving, more or less starving young artists, warily circling well-known art dealers like Sir Ian.

The girls were unusally pretty, as always. Drinks and drugs were circulating freely as it was the custom on occasions like this.

Orlando couldn't have cared less. He snorted one or two lines in passing. Even that didn't help.

"What am I doing among these idiots?" he thought, abruptly turning his back to a middle-aged business man who had been babbling on end about his oh-so-exciting stock market transactions.

Just when heading for the backdoor Orlando was informed that Sean wanted to see him.

Climbing the stairs to Sean's private rooms on the upper floor Orlando had heard Cate's laughter for the first time. He hadn't thought much about it then.

After knocking at the door he stepped inside quickly.

"Sean, you wanted to talk…," he began, but the words died on his lips instantly.

The first thing Orlando had seen was Sean, reclining on some sort of divan with his shirt opened wide. One hand buried in a mass of white-blond hair, while the other hand was spread over Cate's ivory-white back.

Throwing her head back, Cate began to laugh again, low and throaty. "Yes, that's it."

"Hush, darling," Sean murmured against her hair. "We have a visitor."

Orlando raised his hands as if in defence.

"So sorry. Billy said you wanted to see me. Guess it's been a misunderstanding."

He turned around to leave the room, but Sean called him back.

"No reason to be sorry, Orlando. I have no secrets from you."

Orlando didn't like Sean's smirk. "You're such a liar," he thought.

"This is Cate, by the way. Cate, this is Orlando."

Not in the least ashamed, Cate turned her head and begun to scrutinize him.

"So, this is the beautiful Orlando."

Orlando thought he should look away. Should not look at her lips, for example, burgundy red and swollen. Nor at the thin black collar around her neck, diamond-studded like the leash attached to it, the two only pieces Cate was wearing on herself.

"Don't be shy, Orlando," she smiled, cocking her head. "We can have so much fun together. Wouldn't you want to know how good it is to be fucked by Sean?"

Orlando just stared at them. This was not really happening, was it? The whole scene had quite a surreal touch to it.

"Oh, Orlando wants to know," Sean murmured, his cheek touching Cate's neck. "He wants it so much. But he thinks he'd be losing his advantage if he gave in. Instead he goes on tempting and teasing me with his innocent, wide-eyed looks."

"You must be imagining that," Orlando replied, trying to sound as unaffected as possible.

"No, it's just what I see."

Cate had extended her slender, milk-white arm in an inviting gesture. "Come here."

Orlando sighed and looked from the picture to Viggo. "I had no idea she was an artist."

"She didn't tell you?"

"No."

They hadn't talked much that night, at least nothing Orlando could remember apart from trifles.

What he did remember was how soft her skin had been, how white and perfect, and how she had studied him with kohl-rimmed sphinx eyes, green and mysterious. For she, too, liked to watch, until the very last moment, when Orlando himself had trouble keeping his eyes open, completely overwhelmed by experiencing *this*.

Fucking while being fucked.

Cate spread out under him- like ivory and blood-red pomegranates – moaning like a whore. And Sean was behind him, his ragged breath against Orlando's neck and his hands firm on Orlando's hips. No, not only there, Sean's hands were everywhere it seemed, on Cate's breasts, around Orlando's cock and over his mouth.

Orlando's lips were trembling when Sean was coming inside him, just before Orlando himself had flown off to the other side.

"I didn't know she takes pictures." Orlando whispered, tracing the canvas with his hands.

Cate's work was a kind of collage, there were snippets and headlines from newspapers "Man murdered in his sleep", "Mysterious killings", "Why did it happen?" Here and there colours were splashed over the canvas, dots of red, streaks of black, white and grey, but the photo right at the centre was still visible.

It was a photo like the ones he'd been given so many times before. It showed a man who was walking down a street. The picture must have been taken either very early in the morning or late in the afternoon as a long shadow stretched out on the ground behind the man.

Rundown brick walls could be seen on both sides, but nobody else. The street seemed empty and deserted. Orlando could vaguely remember having been to that part of the town, though he could not recall someone taking pictures of him. But maybe he had registered the clickclickclick of camera, because just in the moment when the photo was being taken he had looked up. Directly into an imaginary opposite's eyes.

There were words and unfinished sentences – lines from a poem perhaps? - scribbled all over the painting. The hand-writing was hardly readable, apart from one word in white before the black hole of an opened window:

"L'ange meurtrier"*.

Viggo watched him expectantly. "You are Orlando, aren't you?"

Orlando felt his mouth go dry. He didn't know what to say.

Slowly, Viggo turned the picture.

On the bottom right corner, just above the signature, written in the meticulous handwriting he knew so well stood: "Orlando, 2005".

Orlando felt as if the ground gave out from under him. His voice was no more than a whisper.

"They've been playing games with me. All the time."

* A.N. "L'ange meurtier= angel of death"


End file.
